Monday, June 28, 2010

the amusing risks of ultrasounds

Hello readers, remember a few posts ago when I wrote about using humor at an ultrasound to ease the tensions? Well, I got the results back from the ultrasound and wouldn't you know it, it said I had ovaries, even though my gonads had been removed as a small child. The report went so far as to say my reproductive system was "unremarkable". To say I was shocked by this would be an understatement. There were only four explanations I could think of:

1. The surgeons removed the wrong thing, and I still had my gonads

2. The ultrasound had been misread

3. Like some of my hermaphrodite brethren, the earthworms and sponges, I had the ability to regenerate lost body parts

4. There was a mix up and I was given someone else's ultrasound result (I hoped this was not the case because some poor "normal" lady would be in for an even worse shock then me if she got my ultrasound)

As it turns out, it was number 2. In a case of confirmation bias, the ultrasound tech expected to see ovaries, and thus mislabeled loops of my colon as ovaries. The moral of this story is when things seem weird, ask questions of your doctors. We deserve to know the truth